CI Higher Education Blog

CI Higher Education Blog provides our clients with current and upcoming digital trends, news, and insights across higher education on a variety of digital topics including social media, development apps, campaigns, user experience best practices and other hot-button educational issues.

Alumni Associations Celebrate the Holidays

With holiday festivities in full swing, 21 schools in the Alumni Monitor coverage group have produced seasonal greeting videos, hosted themed events, launched giveaways and posted holiday wishes on social media. After a review of all these celebrations, three stand out for their alum engagement and creativity:

1. Seton Hall’s Twitter Giveaways

The university launched two giveaways, for Santa hats and a Christmas ornament, to engage alumni and supporters on Twitter and encourage them to complete surveys, which have since closed. The university promoted the giveaways through an embedded alumni Twitter feed.

Embedded Alumni Homepage Holiday Giveaway Tweets

2. UNC-Chapel Hill’s Heeliday Cards

In honor of the holiday season, UNC-Chapel Hill released five downloadable “Heeliday” cards for alumni association members on a private site page with printing and folding instructions. The college promoted the cards through an alumni homepage banner image and posts on the alumni Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages.

Alumni Homepage Banner Image

Sample Heeliday Card Tweet

3. UCLA’s Holiday Pictures

During the month of December, UCLA launched a holiday-themed photo album on social media to showcase school pride among alumni and encouraged alums to post and tag school-related holiday photos. The university then selected its favorite seasonal photos tagged with #BruinHolidays and featured alumni photos on Instagram and Twitter. In addition to the standard practice of having followers tag photos on the related social media platforms, UCLA Alumni also provided the option to email photos to the association, which will later upload received pictures to